By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The United Nations (UN) is weighing the option of putting to a halt the supply of relief items, including food aid deliveries in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, following deadly attacks on humanitarian workers.
At least five aid workers were killed in the first six months of the year, 10 physically assaulted or injured and 11 kidnapped by unidentified criminal groups, Reuters reports, quoting a document dated August 2024.
The three-page document where the notice of suspension of aid is written is marked “internal”. It states that the UN is “seriously considering implementing a temporary cessation of relief operations in the region.”
The proposal was written by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and shared with the Ethiopia Humanitarian Country Team (EHCT), which includes donors, NGOs and UN agencies.
Several NGOs and donors have already opposed the move, according to three sources familiar with discussions surrounding the proposal.
Donor agencies say withdrawal of relief operations would have a serious consequency on over 2.3 million people in Amhara, a region which depends on food aid to survive.
Amhara is home to more than 36 million people as well as the first stop for thousands of refugees fleeing the war in neighbouring Sudan.
Crisis has continued in the region since fighting broke out between Ethiopia’s army and Amhara Fano militia men in July 2023.
According to an estimate by the UN, hundreds of persons have been killed and several others displaced.
Fano militia fought alongside the army in a two-year civil war that pitted Addis Ababa against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which controls the northern region of Tigray.
During that conflict, Ethiopia’s government denied accusations that it was using starvation as a weapon of war against Tigray.
After the war ended, relations between Fano and the government deteriorated over accusations that Addis Ababa was undermining Amhara’s security by dismantling its regional army.
On Sept. 29, a staff member with the children’s charity Plan International, Teklemariam Tarekegn, was killed in Debre Mewi in Amhara along with two others when the minibus they were travelling in was attacked, according to the organisation.
